Teens With Type I Diabetes

Managing diabetes is more than occasionally checking blood sugar levels and eating healthy. It is a lifetime commitment to monitoring your body and making adjustments as needed, especially as your body changes with getting older. At times adapting to those changes can be very overwhelming, particularly for adolescents living with diabetes.

The teenage years are often an awkward period of self-discovery, experiencing the world independently, and sometimes dealing with peer pressure. For youth living with Type 1 diabetes, this awkward period can include obstacles other teens do not need to consider. Some of these normal pressures can be life-threatening.

Empowering young adults with knowledge on living with diabetes provides them with tools to survive and thrive during these transitions. Hurley Medical Center’s Diabetes Center has taken proactive steps to help young kids transition from pediatric into young adulthood diabetes management.

Jennifer Walrath is the nurse clinician at Hurley Diabetes Center. By working closely with dietitians, the Hurley Diabetes Center team has been able to tackle several concerns related to different stages of diabetes. Their focus is to help patients lead healthy, happy lives while living with diabetes.

There are important times for people to get updated information on diabetes and available treatments. “When a child is diagnosed with diabetes as they are growing up and becoming a young adult, they may have never received formal education themselves. Sometimes the parents have taken the lead in that role,” Jennifer notes. Although parents may have helped manage their child’s diabetes, it is important as these kids transition into adulthood that they acquire their own individual knowledge on diabetes, including treatment and insight.

Hurley Diabetes Center has created programs to help during this transition. Jennifer explains, “As they look to go off to college or get a job, their own needs change. There may be some topics they are not comfortable talking to parents about, things like sex and drinking. Both are very important to know how to handle properly, especially when you are a kid with  diabetes facing these things for the first time.”

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BY ELIZABETH MARASCO